Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables
- Preface
- Symbols and Abbreviations
- 1 Bases of Old Saxon metre: an introduction
- 2 Metrical types and positions: levelling and reorganisation
- 3 Resolution and alliteration: repatterning and reconstitution
- 4 Hypermetric verses and lines: diversification and restructuring
- 5 The remaking of alliterative tradition: gradation and harmonisation
- Appendix 1 Foreign names
- Appendix 2 The metre of the Old Saxon Genesis
- References
- Index to the scansion of the Heliand
- Index to the scansion of the Old Saxon Genesis
- Index of authors
- Index of subjects
- Index of verses cited for discussion or exemplification
2 - Metrical types and positions: levelling and reorganisation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables
- Preface
- Symbols and Abbreviations
- 1 Bases of Old Saxon metre: an introduction
- 2 Metrical types and positions: levelling and reorganisation
- 3 Resolution and alliteration: repatterning and reconstitution
- 4 Hypermetric verses and lines: diversification and restructuring
- 5 The remaking of alliterative tradition: gradation and harmonisation
- Appendix 1 Foreign names
- Appendix 2 The metre of the Old Saxon Genesis
- References
- Index to the scansion of the Heliand
- Index to the scansion of the Old Saxon Genesis
- Index of authors
- Index of subjects
- Index of verses cited for discussion or exemplification
Summary
In this chapter, first from a strictly synchronic perspective I shall identify significant metrical types in the Heliand and closely examine their diverse realisations that result from varying associations of drops with language materials. Through comparison of these metrical types and their major variants in the Heliand with those in Old English metre (Beowulf), I shall then bring to light characteristic metrical features of the Heliand that deviate from the Old English metrical tradition, and explore from a diachronic perspective the motivations and mechanisms of these metrical reconfigurations and reorganisations that profoundly affected the Heliand and therewith contributed to forging a new identity of the metre.
Type A1 (/ × / ×)
In this section, I am concerned with the varying ways in which the first drop of type A1 is realised on the surface and with the differences that they effect in verse distribution patterning. In the first, descriptive part of this section (subsections 2.1.1 through 2.1.6), I shall examine distinct distribution patterns of major realisation variants of type A1. Then in the second part devoted to explanatory accounts (subsection 2.1.7), I shall turn to characterise the observed patterns in general terms, determine their structural basis by identifying the parameters responsible for the characteristic distributions in question, and explore the emergence and establishment of new patterns in the Heliand metre through the remaking of traditional versecraft.
- Type
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- Information
- The Metre of Old Saxon PoetryThe Remaking of Alliterative Tradition, pp. 29 - 193Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2004